Town defender Lonwijk dismayed his screamer counted for nothing at Reading
Town defender Lonwijk dismayed his screamer counted for nothing at Reading
Town defender Nigel Lonwijk was left hugely disappointed that his magnificent first goal for the club counted for nothing as the Hatters were beaten 3-2 by Reading in their League One contest at the Select Leasing Car Stadium on Thursday night.
Luton had found themselves 2-0 behind with 52 minutes gone, Lewis Wing slotting home an early penalty, while former Town striker Jack Marriott then thundered home a terrific strike to seemingly put the hosts in control. However, Jordan Clark’s fifth goal of the season then gave Jack Wilshere’s men a lifeline, before Liam Walsh got into the box on 76 minutes and tried to find Jerry Yates, the ball diverting to Lonwijk who was stationed some 25 yards or so from goal.
Without a goal in his previous 17 appearance for the club since arriving on a season-long loan from Wolverhampton Wanderers, or even really going close, he pulled back his right foot to hammered a stunning daisycutter of an effort through a crowd of players as it flew past Royals stopper Joel Pereira and into the net, his first time on the scoresheet since March when he was at Huddersfield Town.
With the Hatters still celebrating and supporters’ attention turning to cheering their side on to a potential winner that hadn’t looked likely a a few minutes earlier, Luton’s defence then switched off for the third time in the contest as Cohen Bramall missed a header allowing Derrick Williams to feed Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan who was able to tuck past an advancing Josh Keeley from a tight angle.
Luton then couldn’t find another response as Lonwijk said of his own cracker: “It was good contact, but I would have preferred that to be the winner. I’m not bad at it, I’ve scored a few, but I normally don’t do it, so I’m happy to do it now. I’ll try a few more times and hopefully we can get a few more points, but we’re just all disappointed as we gave three goals away that we shouldn’t give away and ended up with no points.
One of the main causes of frustration for Lonwijk and his team-mates was the manner in which his side defended as having started brightly, they were then caught on seven minutes from their own free kick, Reading able to break out from their own area, with the ball eventually cannoning through to Daniel Kyerewaa who was brought down by an unwise and unnecessary challenge from Keeley.
After the break, Teden Mengi’s misplaced pass saw the Royals take full advantage for their second goal as well, as asked for his view on the defensive errors, Lonwijk continued: “We’re controlling the game, we’re not creating enough in the first half, second half we created a lot more chances, but we’ve just got to better defensively and stop conceding these goals.
“We get a free kick and then 10 seconds later we get a penalty against us, we need to look at that as a team, how we set up as a team so we can deal with counter attacks better. We get each other out of trouble, if someone makes a mistake, the next person stands up and tries to help them out. As a team we’ve not done that and that’s why we’ve lost the game. People put their hands in the air if they know they made a mistake, we speak about it, we know what to do better, just go back to the drawing board and try to get better again.”
With Lonwijk asked once more to play out of position as a right back in Berkshire, asked about his maiden strike, Wilshere added: “We speak a lot about our structure behind the ball when we’re attacking and we want our full backs to be in positions where you think, either if we’re building one side, we can use you in the middle of the pitch or if we attack, put the ball in the box and it comes out, you’re in a position to counter press.
"We picked up a really good position and I was really happy as I thought at times we commit down to one side and then it’s on to cap out and circulate in their half which we did, and you can see the joy we get from it. He’s got quality Nige and I’ve said it before, he’s not a right back, but I thought he was really good tonight as a right back. Credit to him for showing character, stepping up and giving us something, unfortunately it meant nothing in the end.”